Not yet mining social media sites for data? With 800 million users and growing, Facebook presents a wealth of information and data mining opportunities. Just how much information and opportunity? Consider this:
- There more than 600 million active users
- Some 250 million of those active users are accessing Facebook from their mobile devices
- 50% of active users log onto Facebook in any given day
- The average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Add to that:
- Over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, community pages, events, etc.)
- The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
- The average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
- More than 30 billion pieces of content (news stories, blog posts, photos, videos, web links, etc.) are shared each month.
Holy guacamole. Back to how to search Facebook without logging in – you want to know more? But of course you do. So let’s get serious about this searching business.
Open Facebook* Status Search lets you search the public Facebook timeline without logging into Facebook. The site isn’t a part of the Facebook website or endorsed by Facebook. In fact, it used to be called “Open Facebook Search” until Facebook and their wicked on it legal team suggested that wasn’t such a good idea.
We were playing with Facebook search today during the process of talking about and writing this post and decided we’d search for something we really love – beer. Big surprise there. Boulevard Brewing Company, a Kansas City hometown success story (who also happens to brew great beer) was what we decided to play with for demonstration purposes.
You’ll see my search is for “boulevard beer” and the results that the tool pulls. Now your wheels are turning. I can see it from here.
Imagine if you wanted to do some homework about your brand or product, how easy it is to use a tool like this to search Facebook and see what people are saying. Even better, you can see what they’re posting, the links and visuals they are sharing and a wealth of other content. Oh, but I do love the Internet. Sorry. Sometimes that just can’t be helped.
It’s also a great way to discover – in a way that yet-to-be-fully developed influence measurement tools like Klout don’t – true brand advocates. Using Facebook search tools like this, it doesn’t take long to find people who love your brand, who talk about it, who share great content and who are your most loyal brand advocates. And if you’re looking for influencers, what better source to tap than those very people?
Oh, and if you have a use for embedding the results of your search on a website, they make it easy to do that, too.
And as an aside, this is certainly not the only Facebook data mining tool out there. Lee Odden wrote a post on his TopRank Marketing Blog that dives into this topic further and provides an overview of some great tools and information. Lee doesn’t know this, but I’m a regular stalker fan of his, and if you’re smart, you’ll follow suit.
I know you’d like to stay longer, but I’ll bet you’re off to do some Facebook searching of your own. My favorite saying on the planet (besides I love the Internet) — Information is Power. The more you know, the better you can do whatever it is you do. Now, go get some.
Shelly Kramer is the founder and CEO of V3 Broadsuite (V3B), Senior Analyst and one of the founding partners at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked with some of the world’s largest brands to lead them into the digital space, embrace disruption and the reality of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of Digital Transformation. As a brand strategist, she has decades of experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, and driving strategy and growth for B2B brands across multiple verticals.
